


Finding Home

by Sophia_Bee



Series: Road Trip Fics [1]
Category: Veronica Mars (TV)
Genre: F/M, Fluff, Is There Such Thing as Dark Fluff, Marriage, Songfic, oh look another fic that involves a road trip
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-03
Updated: 2014-10-03
Packaged: 2018-02-19 13:15:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,575
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2389607
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sophia_Bee/pseuds/Sophia_Bee
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Veronica and Logan find each other in the aftermath</p>
            </blockquote>





	Finding Home

_**I'll send an S.O.S. to the world.** _

Shit on a shingle is what grandpa used to call it. It was something nasty the army had served him for breakfast and all the men would sit around and laugh about S.O.S.

He’d been in the Korean War and sometimes when Logan was little he’d tell him stories that would make the hair on the back of his neck rise up. They weren’t the kind of war stories in the movies, full of chiseled heroes fighting the faceless, brutal enemy. They were stories of struggle, stories of loss, stories that contained the true brutality of war. They were about young lives cut short, limbs being blown off. They were about surviving in bitter cold with no jacket and eating grass to stay alive. They were about never knowing if that day would be your last. Grandpa told them with his voice hushed, his eyes watering around the edges and his hands clutching at the nine year old boy balanced on his knee.

He didn’t want the stories to die, grandpa would tell Logan. They both knew if Lynn caught them grandpa would be chastised and Logan would be sent outside to play in the hot Palm Desert sunshine and both would wink conspiratorially at each other, their wink saying ‘next time’.

When Logan was ten grandpa took a pistol and put a bullet through his head. The ghosts from Korea had finally caught up with him, he said in a hastily scrawled note that Logan would find years later tucked in the back of Lynn’s desk drawer.

Shit on a shingle. Logan wondered if it was worse than the slop they pushed in front on him every morning at the boy’s home. Maybe it was better termed gruel, the kind of watery porridge spoken poorly of in fairy tales. Whatever it was, it was a far cry from Lynn’s eggs benedict and Logan longed for a nice hollandaise sauce.

The trial was still going to happen. Aaron refused to plead guilty despite the overwhelming evidence pointing in his direction. He’d hired one of the best lawyers in the country and told Logan through the thick glass of the visitor’s booth that he had no intention of giving up this fight. Logan didn’t look at him the entire time. He just listened to his father’s voice crackling over the phone and imagined what Lilly must have seen in her last moments. Did Aaron have the same look Logan had seen countless times as the belt snapped through the air and licked against his skin? He’d hung up the phone and walked away without a word.

He was practically an orphan now. There had been a conference about what to do about the poor little rich boy who was left adrift in the world. Maybe he’d still be in that house, in his old room. That might have happened if Trina hadn’t shown up to the conference high as a kite. There was a relative from his mother’s side who said maybe they would take him for the six months until he turned eighteen, but they were busy in Arizona and didn’t really want the publicity of having a killer’s son taking up their spare bedroom.

The woman from the state had sighed heavily when she told him there was only one other option. They wouldn’t look for permanent placement because he’d be eighteen soon, but they needed somewhere to put him in the meantime. It was a transitional facility just outside Neptune. He’d have his own room and three meals per day. He’d be able to attend school in the fall.

Logan fought back tears. His father’s voice echoed in his head that real men never cried. Even when their entire life was being ripped away from them, even when their back was stinging with welts just because they’d come in late from a party. Real men sat stoically and didn’t show emotion. Real men didn’t tell their father to fuck off like Logan did later that night, sitting on the edge of his bed, a bottle of tequila in one hand, the taste of salt on his tongue as he screamed all the things he could never say to his father’s face.

The bed at the home was uncomfortable. Logan would lie away at night, staring at the ceiling, counting the cracks in the paint. He’d think about all the things he’d say to his father if he could find the words. He’d think about his mother and how she’d be horrified if she knew her body was floating somewhere out there, bloated and rotting. He knew she wanted to be beautiful forever, even after death. He’d think about Veronica and the look on her face that day at the beach and somewhere inside he decided to forgive her because everything was so fucked up and crazy, and none of her accusations seemed to matter any more now that the lid had been ripped off the Pandora’s box that contained the truth.

One night he got up from his musings and sat at the creaking desk against one bare wall. He pulled out a piece of paper and started to write. He wrote everything. How it felt the first time he kissed her. How much he’d wanted her to be his girlfriend. He wrote about betrayal and it’s insignificance in the scheme of things. He told her how Duncan told him she’d gone back to find the letter that would prove his innocence. He ended the letter telling her about the home and how he hoped they could find a way to be friends again. His hand shook a little as he wrote ‘love’ at the bottom then signed his name. Then, on a whim, he scrawled three letters across the bottom.

_S.O.S._

The only thing Logan had on the bare, dingy white walls of his room at the home was a calendar. It wasn’t even a fancy calendar; he’d gotten it for free from an insurance agent in the mail. It showed pictures of shining, happy people who were living their lives with contentment knowing their loved ones had full coverage. He marked it every day, counting down the hours, the minutes until he would walk away from that shit hole and all moms’ money would be his and he’d leave Neptune with one giant ‘fuck you’.

In the meantime he ate the slop and thought about grandpa and shit on a shingle, about the Korean War and all the stories of the men who suffered, how he’d longed each day to be rescued. Logan decided he could make it one more day and he hoped that one day someone would rescue him also.

_**It’s been a year since I wrote my note** _

Veronica wiped the sheen of sweat that had formed across her forehead and cursed her father one more time for not buying a window air conditioner that summer. He’d promised to buy one every summer and each year he decided that the box fan in the window worked just fine.

Keith was lying in the living room. He’d been home from the hospital for almost a month now and the doctor said he was recovering nicely. For the first week Veronica hadn’t left his side, sleeping under a blanket on the floor of his room, listening to his steady breathing in the middle of the night.

Everything started piling up. The newspapers stacked outside the door. The dishes were piled so high in the sink that they started eating takeout each night. The mail was thrown on the entryway table, no consideration given to any bills that needed paying. Laundry was done only when she ran out of underwear. It took everything Veronica had just to get her father to his follow-up appointments.

Alicia would call and Veronica would tell her everything was fine, because to her it was. Her dad was alive, she was alive, and that’s what counted. Finally Wallace swung by one afternoon and as Veronica led him around the stacks in the living room and apologized for the dishes in the sink. It was then she realized she needed help. When Wallace left, Veronica picked up the phone and called Alicia.

That was two weeks ago and the house was finally getting back into order under Alicia’s watchful eye.

“There’s a letter here for you.”

Veronica looked up from the television and over to where Alicia was standing with an envelope in her hand. A bead of sweat running down the side of her face and made a mental note to discuss air conditioning with Alicia.

“It’s from Logan.”

Veronica swallowed hard and tried to ignore the tears that suddenly stung at the edges of her eyes.

_Logan_

It wasn’t that she hadn’t thought of him since that night. There was barely a day when she didn’t think of him, then quickly push him into the back of her mind because there were so many other important things to deal with. No matter how much she tried, he always came back in her dreams where he would touch her and kiss her and she would whisper how sorry she was into the crook of his neck and when she woke up she knew she’d really meant it.

Everything felt difficult now. She’d heard the court wouldn’t let him live with Trina. Duncan had told her one-day over ice cream at the Tasty Freeze that they were moving him to some sort of group home until he turned eighteen. Veronica had tried hard to look uninterested as she looked away from Duncan’s face and out over the fading tables, squinting in the afternoon sunshine. Duncan hadn’t said much more after that.

Then dad had come home and Logan Echolls had become the least of her worries. Until now.

Veronica stood up from the chair and walked toward Alicia.

“I might as well read it.” She mumbled, not looking Alicia in the face as she put out her hand and felt the almost weightless rectangle drop into it. She gripped it between her thumb and forefinger and rubbed the paper a little, feeling that it was good quality. Then she dropped her hand to her side and looked up into Alicia’s concerned brown eyes. They’d never talked about what happened, but Veronica knew Wallace had told her and Alicia knew that Logan Echolls was more than a friend and less than an enemy.

When Veronica made it back to her room she sat on the bed and controlled herself for exactly two minutes as she looked at Logan’s chicken scratch handwriting on the envelope. She wondered for only one minute if I was a good idea to open the letter. Her life was much less complicated without Logan Echolls and all the baggage he brought wit him. Then she remembered the look on his face the day she told him she thought he murdered Lilly, the girl they both had loved with all their hearts. She’d known then she’d made a terrible mistake, which was why she went back to the Kane house that night. Which was why she tore open the envelope and carefully pulled out the piece of paper, her hands shaking.

She scanned it quickly, reading bits and pieces of sentences, determining that is wasn’t a very small letter bomb or a letter filled with hateful epithets. It was just a letter. He wrote about everything, like they were old friends meeting over coffee and catching up on each other’s lives. Then at the end he signed it with his name and something else that caught her eye.

_Love_

Veronica felt her chest clench. Then at the very bottom she saw something else scrawled across the page like he’d written it quickly.

_S.O.S._

Veronica grabbed her jacket from off the chair she’d thrown it on earlier. She shrugged it on over her tank top then quickly walked down the hallway and into the kitchen where Alicia was doing dishes.

“I’m going out.” She declared, grabbing the keys to her dad’s car of the key rack.

“Okay.” Alicia said, smiling a little. “Call if you’re going to be out all night.”

Veronica smiled back. Alicia understood. Grabbing her bag from the floor next to the door, Veronica stepped out into the sticky summer night and took a deep, shaky breath. She looked at the letter that was still clutched in her sweaty hand, her eyes scanning for the return address.

_**Love can break your heart.** _

He was walking back to the store when the car pulled up beside him and the passenger door opened.

“Get in.” a familiar voice said. Logan took another drink of the beer he had concealed in a brown paper bag, a trick courtesy of all his friends from his bum fight days. He prayed for the numbness that would make what was happening a dream.

“Logan.” Her voice was low, dangerous. Finally he turned his head to find Veronica Mars staring back at him.

“Fuck you.” He hissed then kept on walking. He heard screech of her brakes and the slam of her door and he knew she was walking behind him.

“Logan.”

“No.”

“I got your letter.”

Logan stopped. He’d forgotten about the fucking letter, written in a moment of weakness. He’d wished he’d never sent it the next day, but then a week went by and another and he decided if she could just go fuck herself. It was the final proof that Logan Echolls was truly alone in this world.

Now the letter was back to haunt him.

“What took you so fucking long, then?” he asked, turning toward her.

Veronica looked smaller and thinner than he remembered, her eyes had black shadows underneath that hadn’t been there before. The look on her face was pleading.

“I’ve been…” Veronica’s voice trailed off as she looked at him. “…busy.”

Logan laughed.

“I just read it today.”

He turned away.

“I came as soon as I read it.”

One step away from her and the ache in his chest started again. Two steps away and it started to burn. Three steps and he heard her voice.

“I’m sorry.”

Logan stopped. He didn’t turn around, just stopped in the middle of the sidewalk as the sun was dropping behind the hills and casting strange shadows of black and grey around him. He heard her come up behind him, one step, two steps, three steps. He flinched as he felt her hand lightly touch his shoulder.

Aaron’s voice echoed through Logan’s head as he felt a tear slip from the edge of his eye.

_Real men never cry._

Fuck you dad, real men don’t fuck their son’s girlfriend then kill her either.

Logan’s shoulders shook as he fought for the will to take another step, to walk away from her forever. He’d been able to leave everything else behind.

“Come with me.”

Her voice was a soft whisper, like the night he kissed her for the second time and she’d asked him what he had to feel guilty about, her voice husky because she knew he was about to kiss her, her eyes telling him she knew the answer to her question.

Logan leaned back into her touch and closed his eyes. Another tear slipped down his cheek. Then he turned around and found her looking at him with the same tears in her eyes, the same hurt on her face.

“I…” he started when she took one last step toward him, her arms reaching around his neck, pulling his face to hers. It might have been their fiftieth kiss. He’d stopped counting after the bathroom. It felt like the first. His tongue slipped against hers as he devoured her mouth, the memory of how she felt in his arms flooding through him. Then he pulled back and his mouth opened to finish say what he’d started. To tell her that he’d never stopped caring, that he’d never stopped…

“Don’t say it.” She whispered against his lips. “Not yet.”

Logan smiled then kissed her again. He let his lips tell her what she wouldn’t allow him to say with words.

_**Love can mend your life.** _

Only eighty-five more miles to Vegas. That’s what the last green sign with white letters had said as they sped across the desert in the early morning light. Veronica glanced at the sleeping figure in her passenger seat.

There was one way to free Logan from the prison he’d been put in. Veronica knew it was all up to her.

He didn’t know about her plan. Hell, she’d barely known herself until she was holding him in her arms again and writing him a love letter with her lips against his skin. It was that moment she knew she’d give up everything for him.

He didn’t ask where they were going when she put the car in gear and started to drive away from Neptune. He just slouched back into the seat and put one hand on her knee, rubbing her skin with his thumb.

“Thank you.” Logan said over the quiet hum of the car.

“I owe you.” Veronica replied, her eyes watching the white line on the side of the road, not wanting to look over at him.

“You owe me nothing.”

He was wrong. Even though Lilly’s real killer was behind bars, there was part of Veronica that had to live with the knowledge that her quest for the truth had destroyed Logan’s life, even if that life had been built on a mountain of lies.

Sixty more miles to Las Vegas.

They stopped at a gas station for sodas and stale donuts. Logan scarfed them down and told her about the terrible food they’d been serving him at the home. He told her that the people were nice enough but the other boys looked at him strangely, poor little rich kid stuck in some alternative universe. Veronica listened, then leaned over and kissed him fully on the mouth.

“I…” she started to say.

“Don’t say it.” Logan said softly. “Not now.”

Forty-five miles to Las Vegas.

“It’s only five more months.” Logan says as he looks out the window. “I can make it five more months.”

“What if you didn’t have to?” Veronica asks, her hands gripping the wheel tightly as the question hangs in the air.

“I would go away.” Logan says quietly. “Somewhere where they don’t know me. Maybe Europe.”

They are both silent. Veronica watches the rolling hills of the desert flash by. She sees a bird flying in the distance.

“Europe’s far away.” Veronica says after a while.

Logan says nothing as he stares out the window once again. They are quiet again.

“Maybe you would come with me.” He finally says, so quietly that Veronica isn’t sure she’s heard him correctly.

When the sign says Thirty Miles to Las Vegas Veronica pulls her car onto the shoulder. Logan looks over at her in surprise.

“Have to take a piss?”

“No.”

“Okay.”

She sits there for a moment, trying to find a way to say what she knows needs to be said.

“Things have felt so strange since that night,” She starts, taking a deep breath. “Everything has felt off-kilter. Until now.”

Logan’s eyebrows rise as he watched her face.

“And I think this…you…us…is what’s been missing.”

Fuck, this is hard, Veronica thinks as she watches him watching her. The air his thick with anticipation.

“And you need help. You can’t stay in that place. And I…I….”

She takes a deep breath.

“I love you.”

His eyes widen. His mouth opens to say something and she puts her hand up.

“Don’t. I need to finish. I don’t know how you feel about me, but I know I would do anything for you. So…there’s one way to get you out of that home….”

Veronica takes a deep breath.

“It’s only a half hour to Vegas. Would you marry me, Logan?”

_**Hundred billion castaways, looking for a home** _

The sand is hot and Veronica is grateful once again that Logan insisted she bring the beach umbrella. She pushes her sunglasses down her nose and looks down the beach for her husband…

_husband_

…to surface from the azure blue waters of the Mediterranean.

It’s been a year since that conversation outside Las Vegas. A year since Logan turned to her and said ‘yes’, his voice hoarse with emotion.

Veronica smiled. It was funny how life worked out sometimes. She pushed her sunglasses up her nose and picked up the post card she’d been writing to Alicia and her dad. They were coming to their small villa nestled on the cliffs above the sea for their honeymoon. They would be there in a week.

Aaron was convicted that fall. The jury took only two hours to come back with a guilty verdict. Trina made a scene at the trial. A month later she was found dead of an overdose in a seedy L.A. motel.

They would go to Paris in the fall. Logan had been admitted to a writing school there. Veronica would be taking photography classes. They would keep healing each other, salving each other’s wounds, holding each other when the nightmares stole their sleep. They’d both lost so much but Logan and Veronica had found a home in each other. 


End file.
